Swearing on a Stack Of Sea Moss

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, September 22, 1998

THE BIG RED word "Compaq" sat in the middle of my screen. Nothing else happened. I turned the machine off and on, cut the power, flipped the switch back on. Nothing.

It's my worst nightmare: a computer crashing, taking with it not only my unbacked-up files, but also my daily passions, habits, livelihood.

When I called the help line, a voice told me to find a Philips screwdriver, get under the desk, take off the back of the computer and try doing something called "clearing the sea moss."

I'm afraid I started swearing. I swore when I was cut off twice and had to start over with someone else, and again, after four hours, when I was told that somebody would call me -- in five days.

LATEST SFGATE VIDEOS

Two days later, Bill dragged me out of the bank, where I had been explaining to a nice woman why I thought the bank was wrong to hold my check for five days. "She must not be used to the word 'bull--,' " he said. "She looked shocked."

I remember the first time I swore. I was 12, sweeping the front porch of our house opposite the high school, when my mother came out with some mild request or another. I told her to go to hell. I said it in the same experimental way I had taught myself to say "What's his face" instead of "What's his name" because I thought it sounded cooler.

Her reaction -- sending me to my room so fast that I arrived there still holding the broom -- set my swearing back at least 10 years. That was good, as teenagers just don't swear well. Neither do foreigners, who sound as if they are translating from their native swear words (and thus sacrifice the crucial explosive quality of an oath).

Nor do women, if what Bill says is true. He says we still don't do it right -- that we are such amateurs that we add the "g" in that word that sounds like trucking, and sound like little kids aping our elders.

SWEARING STILL SHOCKS and offends many people, as it did the woman in the bank, and that's good, because swearing, when done right, is shocking and offensive.

No one who loves words could wish for oaths to disappear from the language entirely. Where would "Gone With the Wind" be without "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"? Or all those "Lethal Weapon" movies without Danny Glover shaking his head, just before he gets up wearily to go catch some more bad guys, saying, "I'm too old for this s--"?

I'd be the first to say there's too much swearing today. We're robbing it of its power by using it too much, rattling off a redundant 10 expletives when an eloquent "Damn!" would do. It isn't just the movies -- we all do it. Nowadays swearing is so commonplace that a nice little old lady will employ a sailor's diction to get us to roll our car back a few inches out of her driveway. We're so used to it we don't even notice. Like the dog named Ginger in the "Far Side" cartoon, we tune out the obscenities, hearing only, "&88!! You! Move that $&!!** car now!"

THINK OF SWEAR words as shining gold coins in a treasure chest, to be spent grudgingly, carefully. If you curse the knot you can't untie in your sneakers, how will you express your feeling when some clod in an SUV backs into your car outside the post office -- or when your new computer is crashing, some telephone head in central Kansas is making you clear the sea moss? Cursing must be saved for moments of extreme feeling.

I don't use profanity myself, of course. That would not be ladylike. But I do use bad words now and then, when a more decorous, "Gee, I wait five days for the computer repairman to call, and then he'll be calling just to make an appointment some time later? Oh, fudge!" will not do to express my precise reaction.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.